A lot of the people Amy Allen encounters seem to think she lives in Nashville. It’s not an unfair assumption to make, given her solid reputation as a songwriter. But the musician, who was born in Maine, studied in Boston and spent a year in New York, is now a three-year L.A. resident. “My whole family is still in Maine,” she tells American Songwriter, before adding with a chuckle, “They’ve had snow a few times already this year, and every time, I have had such bad FOMO!”
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You could say it was a case of ‘fear of missing out’ that led the 29-year-old to return to performing her songs and releasing her own debut album, after years of writing hits for others to sing. Building her music career on penning endearing pop songs for the likes of Selena Gomez, Halsey and Harry Styles, Allen earned her fair share of attention and acclaim. But at a songwriter showcase for the Grammys in 2018, she became aware that something had been missing from it all.
“I played ‘Back to You’ [originally co-written by Allen for Gomez in 2018] first and then I got up to play ‘Without Me’ [recorded by Halsey], and for some reason something just got triggered in me, where I hadn’t played in front of an audience for two and a half years at that point. I just got two chords into the song, and I started welling up with tears,” she says. “I don’t usually ever cry, and I was just like, ‘What’s going on?’ and I kind of looked at Gabs Landman—who wasn’t yet my manager at the time, she was my publisher at APG—and she kind of knew. She knew what had been bubbling under the surface for me, and I didn’t really know yet.”
Growing up in Windham, Maine, Allen never realized she could make a career out of music—even though she took to performing at a young age. She learned the bass when she was eight, played in a rock band with one of her sisters during middle school and started to write songs on guitar in her early teens. “I just absolutely loved it,” she says. “I didn’t really know I could do music for a living. I came from a really small town in Maine, and that just never seemed like a possibility.”
Allen went on to study nursing at Boston College. “Then I realized how much I missed playing music all the time,” she recalls. She then transferred to Berklee College of Music in Boston, setting into motion the steps that would land her in another band and in New York working with Scott Harris, the producer who co-wrote The Chainsmokers’ Grammy Award-winning hit “Don’t Let Me Down,” featuring Daya.
“At that point, I felt like I could write better songs than I had been writing, and I wanted to really put time into writing and just get better at it before jumping into this artist world,” she adds.
While she put her own career as a singer and performer on the back burner, Allen learned a lot, pushing the boundaries of her skills and her sound. In the ensuing two years, she became an in-demand songwriter, working with names that are familiar to any pop fan. Yet, something was always bothering her. By the time she performed the songwriter showcase, Allen couldn’t ignore it anymore.
“That show just made me completely remember how much I love performing,” she says. “As a songwriter, it’s so cool to have your songs sung live on a huge stage that maybe wouldn’t otherwise be if you were performing them. But you don’t get to have that moment of one-on-one interaction with somebody in the audience or see your lyrics resonate with them.”
With the singles from her debut album released so far, Allen gets to have those moments of engagement that she has longed for. She spent a year writing for herself, excited to add in the personal details of her life that she’d avoided doing when writing for others, and connected with new fans in the process. Two of the tracks, “Difficult” and “Queen Of Silver Linings,” have garnered over three million streams and nabbed her a spot on Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2020.
“I started writing music as an expression of self and as my own way of therapy, to talk myself through a lot of things,” she says. In returning to singing her music, she’s developed a comforting, optimistic nature to her pop songs that has helped cultivate this new connection she’s found as a performer.
In the track “What a Time to be Alive,” she and Pink Sweat$ ask, “Would you wanna live in a world that isn’t right?” And they offer listeners a hopeful answer. Even in deeply personal songs, such as “Heaven,” she still finds light in the darkness.
As Allen comes into her own as a solo act, not as a member of someone else’s band or the songwriter behind others’ hits, there’s no more missing out—not for her or for fans.
Photo by Maria Jose Govea
